NOT RECOMMENDED FOR FULL-TEXT PUBLICATION
File Name: 07a0499n.06
Filed: July 16, 2007
Case No. 06-3312
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE SIXTH CIRCUIT
RICKY PITTMAN, )
)
Plaintiff-Appellant, )
) ON APPEAL FROM THE
v. ) UNITED STATES DISTRICT
) COURT FOR THE NORTHERN
CUYAHOGA COUNTY DEPARTMENT OF ) DISTRICT OF OHIO
CHILDREN AND FAMILY SERVICES; )
CYNTHIA HURRIE; and CYNTHIA )
KELLER, )
)
Defendants-Appellees. )
)
_______________________________________
BEFORE: KENNEDY, BATCHELDER, and CLAY, Circuit Judges.
ALICE M. BATCHELDER, Circuit Judge. Ricky Pittman (“Pittman”) appeals the district
court’s dismissal of his three claims brought under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, which allege that Defendants
Cuyahoga County Department of Children and Family Services (“CCDCFS”), Cynthia Hurrie, and
Cynthia Keller (collectively referred to as “Defendants”) (1) violated his Fourteenth Amendment due
process rights, (2) violated his Fourteenth Amendment liberty interest in family relationships, and
(3) acted wantonly and recklessly during state court custody proceedings. Defendants moved for
dismissal, arguing, among other things, that the Rooker-Feldman doctrine deprived the district court
of subject matter jurisdiction over Pittman’s claims. The district court agreed and dismissed
Pittman’s claims with prejudice. Pittman appeals the dismissal, arguing that Rooker-Feldman does
not apply to his claims. We agree with Pittman, REVERSE the district court’s decision, and
REMAND for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
I.
Ricky Pittman is the biological father of Najee Waters (“Najee”). When Najee was only a
few months old, CCDCFS filed a motion for temporary custody with the Cuyahoga County Juvenile
Court. In that motion, CCDCFS highlighted the faults of both parents, noting that Najee’s mother,
Latarra Waters, was a drug addict who had abandoned the child, and Najee’s father, Pittman, could
not be found, had not established paternity, did not provide care or support for the child, and failed
to visit the child on a regular basis. Pittman contends that CCDCFS’s representations about him
were false. CCDCFS attempted to correct some of these erroneous representations by filing a
supplemental document with the juvenile court acknowledging that Pittman actually had established
paternity, was providing financial support for the child, and was unable to visit the child because of
interference by the mother. Despite these more favorable representations of Pittman, the juvenile
court granted temporary custody of Najee to CCDCFS.
CCDCFS then filed an application with the juvenile court seeking permanent custody of
Najee. In that application, CCDCFS stated that Pittman failed to visit Najee for more than three
months and that Pittman agreed CCDCFS should have permanent custody of Najee. Pittman
contends that these assertions are patently false. A few months later, CCDCFS withdrew the
application for permanent custody, seeking instead to vest legal custody of Najee in his great aunt
and uncle. The juvenile court held two hearings on the issue of legal custody; Pittman was served
by publication, but was not personally notified of the hearings. As a result, he did not attend either
of the hearings, and the juvenile court granted legal custody to Najee’s great aunt and uncle.
Over a year later, Pittman filed a motion for modification of custody with the juvenile court.
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Najee’s guardian ad litem filed a motion to dismiss, arguing that the court lacked jurisdiction
because Pittman filed his motion more than a year after custody proceedings had concluded. The
court agreed with the guardian ad litem and dismissed Pittman’s motion for modification of custody;
the Ohio Court of Appeals affirmed that decision.
While Pittman’s appeal was still pending in state court, he instituted these proceedings in
federal district court. In the first two counts of his complaint, Pittman alleges that CCDCFS’s
“failure to award custody of Najee and to even consider [Pittman] for custody, despite his being
ready, willing[,] and able to parent Najee,” violates his Fourteenth Amendment due process rights
and liberty interest in family matters. In the third count, he asserts that CCDCFS acted wantonly,
recklessly, in bad faith, and with a malicious purpose by falsely representing information to the
juvenile court and other county officials in order to “completely cut him out of the [custody]
process.” Defendants filed a motion to dismiss pursuant to Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b)(1) and 12(b)(6),
presenting eight separate bases for dismissal. The district court granted Defendants’ motion to
dismiss, finding that the Rooker-Feldman doctrine deprived it of subject matter jurisdiction over
Pittman’s claims. The court did not address Defendants’ other bases for dismissal. On appeal,
Pittman argues that the district court erred in applying Rooker-Feldman to dismiss his claims.
II.
We review de novo a district court’s ruling that the Rooker-Feldman doctrine deprived it of
subject matter jurisdiction. McCormick v. Braverman, 451 F.3d 382, 389 (6th Cir. 2006).
Generically stated, the Rooker-Feldman doctrine stands for the unremarkable proposition that a
federal district court lacks subject matter jurisdiction to review a state court decision. Id. (stating
that “a district court [cannot] exercise appellate review of a state court decision”). The doctrine
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originally derived from the two Supreme Court cases bearing its name. See Rooker v. Fidelity Trust
Co., 263 U.S. 413 (1923); Dist. of Columbia Court of Appeals v. Feldman, 460 U.S. 462 (1983).
In the years following the Feldman decision, the lower courts gradually expanded the doctrine’s
amorphous application until, recently, the Supreme Court issued its decision in Exxon Mobil Corp.
v. Saudi Basic Industries Corp., 544 U.S. 280 (2005), clarifying and restricting the doctrine’s scope.
The Exxon decision stressed the “narrow” and “limited” application of the doctrine, holding that
“[t]he Rooker-Feldman doctrine . . . is confined to cases of the kind from which the doctrine
acquired its name: cases brought by state-court losers complaining of injuries caused by state-court
judgments rendered before the district court proceedings commenced and inviting district court
review and rejection of those judgments.” Id. at 284. The doctrine does not prevent “a district court
from exercising subject-matter jurisdiction simply because a party attempts to litigate in federal court
a matter previously litigated in state court.” Id. at 293. “If a federal plaintiff presents some
independent claim, albeit one that denies a legal conclusion that a state court has reached in a case
to which he was a party, then there is jurisdiction” because Rooker-Feldman does not apply. Id.
(quotations omitted).
In the wake of Exxon, this circuit has tightened the scope of Rooker-Feldman. See Coles v.
Granville, 448 F.3d 853, 857 (6th Cir. 2006) (“Rooker-Feldman is a doctrine with only limited
application”). In formulating a cogent post-Exxon analysis, we have distinguished between plaintiffs
who bring an impermissible attack on a state court judgment — situations in which Rooker-Feldman
applies — and plaintiffs who assert independent claims before the district court — situations in
which Rooker-Feldman does not apply. McCormick, 451 F.3d at 393. In delineating this distinction,
we noted:
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The inquiry [focuses on] the source of the injury the plaintiff alleges in the federal
complaint. If the source of the injury is the state court decision, then the Rooker-
Feldman doctrine would prevent the district court from asserting jurisdiction. If there
is some other source of injury, such as a third party’s actions, then the plaintiff asserts
an independent claim.
Id. (emphasis added); see also Coles, 448 F.3d at 858 (noting that we “have taken the Supreme
Court’s guidance on the application of Rooker-Feldman and applied the doctrine only when a
plaintiff complains of injury from the state court judgment itself”).
We conclude that none of Pittman’s claims are barred by Rooker-Feldman. In the first two
counts of his complaint, Pittman alleges that Defendants violated his due process rights and his
liberty interest in family matters by refusing to give or even to consider giving him custody of his
child. Defendants, as a children services agency and employees thereof, are required by state statute
to prepare a case plan for any child to whom the agency is providing services, see Ohio Rev. Code
§ 2151.412(A), and to consider, as part of that plan, whether the child should be placed with his
biological parents, see Ohio Rev. Code § 2151.412(G)(1). Defendants’ evaluation of whether a child
can be placed with his parents is independent from the juvenile court’s decision to award custody.
See Ohio Rev. Code § 2151.23(A)(2). We read Pittman’s first two claims as challenging
Defendants’ refusal to recommend that he be given custody of Najee, rather than as a challenge to
the juvenile court’s judgment awarding custody to Najee’s great aunt and uncle; after all, the actual
award of custody was not the prerogative of Defendents, but that of the juvenile court. See id.
Pittman’s third claim similarly challenges Defendants’ conduct, asserting that Defendants acted
wantonly, recklessly, in bad faith, and with a malicious purpose by falsely representing information
to the juvenile court and other county officials in order to “completely cut him out of the [custody]
process.” As relief for these claims, Pittman seeks compensatory damages and a declaratory
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judgment stating that Defendants’ actions violated the Fourteenth Amendment; Pittman does not
seek custody of Najee or otherwise request a reversal of the juvenile court’s decision. All three of
Pittman’s claims focus on Defendants’ actions, rather than the outcome of the state court custody
proceedings. We therefore conclude that the source of Pittman’s alleged injury is Defendants’
actions, not the state court judgment. Because Pittman does not complain of an injury caused by a
state court judgment, we find that he is asserting independent claims, which are not barred by
Rooker-Feldman.
Our post-Exxon decisions confirm that Rooker-Feldman does not bar a federal-court
challenge to an individual’s improper conduct during a prior state court proceeding. In Todd v.
Weltman, Weinberg & Reis Co., 434 F.3d 432, 436-37 (6th Cir. 2006), the plaintiff brought a claim
under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, 15 U.S.C. § 1691 et seq., complaining that the
defendant had submitted a false affidavit in a state court garnishment proceeding. The court
concluded that Rooker-Feldman did not apply because the plaintiff complained of harm caused by
the defendant’s false affidavit, not by the state court’s decision in the garnishment proceedings. Id.
at 437. Similarly, in McCormick, the court found that Rooker-Feldman did not bar the plaintiff’s
claims that the defendant (1) committed fraud and misrepresentation in state court divorce
proceedings, (2) committed an abuse of process in the divorce proceedings, and (3) intentionally
excluded the plaintiff as a party to state court receivership proceedings in order to prevent the
plaintiff from asserting an interest in property. McCormick, 451 F.3d at 392. In holding that Rooker-
Feldman did not apply, the court noted:
None of these claims assert an injury caused by the state court judgments; Plaintiff
does not claim that the state court judgments themselves are unconstitutional or in
violation of federal law. Instead, Plaintiff asserts independent claims that those state
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court judgments were procured by certain Defendants through fraud,
misrepresentation, or other improper means[.]
Id. Finally, in Brown v. First Nationwide Mortgage Corp., No. 05-3597, 2006 WL 3289232, at *3-4
(6th Cir. November 9, 2006), the plaintiff “maintain[ed] that his injuries were caused not by the final
decree of foreclosure issued by the state court but, instead, by the actions of various people involved
in the mortgage foreclosure proceedings.” Id. at *3. Relying on our decision in McCormick, we
reasoned:
[The plaintiff’s] allegations of fraud in connection with the state court proceedings,
like those in McCormick, did not constitute complaints of injuries caused by the state
court judgments, because they do not claim that the source of [the plaintiff’s] alleged
injury is the foreclosure decree itself. Instead, the claims concern the actions of
defendant[s] . . . that preceded the decree. Therefore, [the plaintiff’s] claim that the
mortgage foreclosure decree was procured by fraud is not barred by Rooker-Feldman.
Id. at *4 (quotations and citations omitted).
As did the plaintiffs in Todd, McCormick, and Brown, Pittman challenges Defendants’
allegedly improper conduct, rather than the outcome of the state court proceedings. Relying on these
cases, we conclude that Pittman’s claims are not barred by Rooker-Feldman because he is
complaining of an injury caused by a third party, not a state court judgment. See also Holloway v.
Brush, 220 F.3d 767, 778-79 (6th Cir. 2000) (en banc) (finding, in a pre-Exxon case, that Rooker-
Feldman did not bar a § 1983 action for monetary damages against a county and an individual social
worker).
Defendants assert that Pittman’s claims should be dismissed under Rooker-Feldman because
they are “inextricably intertwined” with issues decided in the state court custody proceedings. Even
though pre-Exxon Rooker-Feldman analysis employed the “inextricably intertwined” analysis, see
Pennzoil Co. v. Texaco, Inc., 481 U.S. 1, 25 (1987) (Marshall, J., concurring); Executive Arts Studio,
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Inc. v. City of Grand Rapids, 391 F.3d 783, 793 (6th Cir. 2004), we have since abandoned this
“inextricably intertwined” analysis. In McCormick, we noted that “inextricably intertwined” is not
a separate legal test used to extend Rooker-Feldman’s scope; rather, it merely “describes the
conclusion that a claim asserts an injury whose source is the state court judgment, a claim that is thus
barred by Rooker-Feldman.” McCormick, 451 F.3d at 394-95 (citing Davani v. Va. Dep’t of Transp.,
434 F.3d 712, 719 (4th Cir. 2006); Hoblock v. Albany County Bd. of Elections, 422 F.3d 77, 86-87
(2d Cir. 2005)); see also Brown, 2006 WL 3289232, at *4. We are thus not persuaded by
Defendants’ arguments.
The district court did not have the benefit of our decisions in Todd, McCormick, and Brown
when it undertook its Rooker-Feldman analysis. That precedent, however, requires that we reverse
the district court’s decision. We pause to acknowledge that, if Pittman were to prevail on the merits
of his federal claims, it is unclear what impact his success in this federal lawsuit would have on the
underlying state court judgment. Without expressing an opinion on the matter, we recognize that
this is an inevitable byproduct of the Supreme Court’s confining the scope of Rooker-Feldman in
Exxon Mobile, 544 U.S. at 284.
III.
For the foregoing reasons, we REVERSE the judgment of the district court and REMAND
for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
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